DC's Amazon lawsuit reminds us that safety is a luxury for Black Americans

The Washington, D.C. attorney general has sued Amazon, alleging the e-commerce giant intentionally slowed service to two low-income, majority-Black neighborhoods in the district. Beginning in 2022, residents of ZIP codes 20019 and 20020 would receive packages much more slowly than the typical two-day shipping to which Prime customers are accustomed. 

Amazon does not deny the delays. Instead, Amazon argues the changes were not based on prejudice or race-based decision-making, but rather a result of increased carjackings, homicides and other violent crimes in those neighborhoods. 

Tragically, in some ways, both parties are correct. Black Americans have long bore the brunt of America’s violent crime problem, and things have gotten worse in recent years, especially in cities run by progressives. 

From 2010 to 2020, the total share of U.S. violent crime victims who were Black increased by 3.2 percent to 32.7 percent of all crime victims. Over this same period, the share of Black Americans in the total U.S. population decreased from 13 percent to 12 percent.

While America was becoming more violent, it was Black Americans who felt the increase most acutely. Unfortunately, this isn’t new.

As Harvard Law professor Randall Kennedy viscerally details in his 1997 book, “Race, Crime, and the Law,” there has been a long history of under-protection of Black lives. From the rape of enslaved and freed Black women in the antebellum South to lynch mobs to shocking yet neglected homicide rates in some Black communities, public policy has either deliberately or passively ignored the plight of Black crime victims for much of history.

In D.C., in the two years from 2019-2020, 96 percent of all homicide and non-fatal shooting victims were Black, even though Black residents made up only 46 percent of the District’s population. That’s exceptionally high but not wholly unique. 

In Atlanta, 85 percent of homicide victims in 2021 were Black, though Black Atlantans made up less than half of the city’s population. In 2022, 77 percent of Chicago’s homicide victims were Black, though Chicago is only 29 percent Black. According to the Violence Policy Center, 54 percent of all homicide victims in 2022 were Black, far above the 12 percent Black share of the national population.

Homicides of young people can be pervasive enough to reduce the life expectancy of entire city populations. Between 2001 and 2006, in Los Angeles County, homicide reduced life expectancy by 0.4 years for all residents and by 2.1 years for Black males. The effect on life expectancy was even more pronounced in low-income neighborhoods. In some low-income, urban neighborhoods, homicide was estimated to decrease the life expectancy of Black males by nearly five years.

Nationwide, the decline in homicides from 1991 to 2014 is credited with a 10-month increase in Black male life expectancy and a 17 percent reduction in the life expectancy gap between White and Black males.

Beyond life expectancy, this level of violence severely impacts community health and prosperity. Not only does it rob the community of valuable lives, but it also creates a ripple effect of economic and social disadvantage. 

Adults in communities with high rates of violence have fewer interactions with friends and are more socially isolated. Job opportunities and private sector job growth shrink substantially in a neighborhood after violence surges, while home values also decrease.

The effects on children are even more significant. According to the Annie E. Casey Foundation, about 3.6 million American kids live in communities their parents deem “unsafe.” Growing up in a community with a high rate of violence worsens children’s aggressive behaviors and normative beliefs about aggression.

Exposure to community violence can also increase depressive symptoms in children and negatively impact academic performance. And perhaps most troubling, when a neighborhood becomes violent, children raised in the bottom quarter of income earners become less economically mobile.

All of this matters because crime concentrates at the sub-city level. Between 3 and 5 percent of one-block street segments represent 50 percent of all crime in most cities. In the neighborhoods where this crime concentrates, people and businesses flee. 

This locks in cycles of poverty and violence that can only be broken by restoring community safety and public order. And in the United States, the data shows these neighborhoods are going to be made up of a majority of Black residents. 

Before the passage of the Secure DC Act last year, Washington had been ground zero for bad public safety policy. But legislators got serious and now progress has been made. Homicides, carjackings and total crime are down citywide in the time since. 

If we’re serious about eliminating barriers to opportunity and improving Black-white gaps in economic and social mobility, ensuring safe neighborhoods is the first step to the solution, not a byproduct of it. 

Joshua Crawford is the director of Criminal Justice Initiatives at the Georgia Center for Opportunity and the author of “Kids and Community Violence: Costs, Consequences, and Solutions” in the newly edited volume "Doing Right by Kids."